Defamation By Internet? Part 1 - Murry Salby's Short-Lived Blog Storm

Climate anti-science adapted well to the Internet. A blog storm (in this case the “SalbyStorm”) can surge through well-linked blogs to spread misinformation or unsupported accusations. Some blogs act as tribal echo chambers where people reinforce others' anger, in this case resembling a famed witch-burning scene, with Macquarie University as main, but not only, witch.

As in the “Climategate” blog storm, the noise was intended for the mainstream. This reached The Australian, but the main SalbyStorm lasted less than a week.

Some earlier storms generated serious harassment of targeted climate scientists. In pre-blog 1996, Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer made personal attacks on Ben Santer via the Wall Street Journal. Later, blogs were employed to continue, as by Paul Chesser in this or this. (Warning: those URLs are OK, but every once in a while, WebCite gets overloaded and gives odd error message. Ignore for now and try later.)

Michael Mann has replaced Santer as favored target, but there have been many other victims, such as Katharine Hayhoe. Only a small fraction of readers need get angry enough to produce reputational damage, hate mail, death threats, a dead rat on the doorstep or floods of email.

Some “skeptical” bloggers routinely accept and repeat both silly anti-science ideas, and other unsuppported claims, as here. Apologies or corrections almost never occur and even if they do, they rarely flow through the network, leaving waves of misimpression there. First impressions stick.

On July 9-12, Macquarie suffered this kind of attack (Wave 1). Ex-Professor Murry Salby made serious, but unsupported and sometimes contradictory, accusations against Macquarie, by the unusual route of email to bloggers. Joanne Nova (Australia), Anthony Watts (Watts Up With That, USA), and Andrew Montford (Bishop Hill, UK) republished them.

After 4 days and 1,500+ comments at those blogs alone, SalbyStorm's Wave 1 ended quickly when Salby's checkered past was detailed at DeSmogBlog. Discussions stopped, although with little apology or introspection about gullibility at “skeptical” blogs. A very few people had wondered at oddities of Salby's claims, searched for his past history, and independently started finding problems within a few hours. Salby supporters did not do that, preferring to specualte and comment.

People believed the worst and repeated it, sometimes expanding defamatory accusations with little concern for evidence. A few of the phrases applied to Macquarie or mainstream climate science included criminal, dictatorial, barbaric, Orwellian, Nazi, Stasi, Deutsch Physika, Marxist, Stalinist, Lysenko, thugs, Mafia, and extended further to “goose-stepping, alarmist, fascist, progressives.” Salby was praised as a science hero, compared to Galileo, Copernicus or Einstein, despite the evident problems in his scientific claims.

Salby sent accusations to bloggers who republished them with little visible effort to calm the mutually-reinforcing commenter outrage. Finally, the story got repeated by The Australian. Experienced watchers have seen this before, but SalbyStorm makes a compact case study to document and recall in future storms.

SalbyStorm's short duration and bounded set of blogs help illustrate roles in the network and behavior inside echo chamber blogs. Part 1 lists the blog posts and graphs their chronology. Soon, Defamation by Internet? Part 2 - SalbyStorm Surges Through (Un)skeptical Blogs, annotates the 1700+ blog comments in detail and summarizes the results.

Part 1 -Tight-coupled blog network

A crosslinked blog network rapidly spread the accusations beyond the key blogs. Steven F. Hayward (Powerline) wrote, “The Climate Mafia Strike Again…” and called Tim Flannery a thug who must have been behind this. Marc Morano (Climate Depot) rapidly reblogged one blog after another for his readers. Australian NOCARBONTAX Climate Sceptics party (NCTCS) and Lord Monckton Foundation followed. YouTube got 5 videos by 1000frolly, seemingly Monckton himself, although those had been removed with no comment by August 16. The prize was The Australian's article by Environment Editor Graham Lloyd, quickly copied by the UK's Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and then reblogged by Morano. The Australian published twice later.

Part 2 - (Un)skeptical echo chambers, conspiracy theories, vitriol

Eager discussions ensued at the key blogs and a few elsewhere, with cross-posting showing clear overlap of readership. Many took Salby on faith. They compared him to Einstein, Galileo or Copernicus as a martyr for good science, despite the clear technical absurdity of his claims, at Skeptical Science or more technically, at Macquarie in 2011 by MU Professor Colin Prentice. Some amplified the accusations to attack the reputations of MU and specific people in various ways, including a cartoon by “josh.”

The University of Colorado had not publicized Salby's departure, although he chose to generate court records by suing in 2008 and 2009. MU had not publicized Salby's 2nd departure until forced by blog storm and The Australian. MU issued press releases, but was criticized strongly by people obviously unaware of rules about personnel actions that tend to minimize publicity. They demanded details and complained that MU made few available and that MU should appear at WUWT and defend itself. A few commenters commendably counseled caution, but most ignored early hints of awkward evidence.

Salby history unearthed, comments rapidly evaporate, interest lost

On July 12, DeSmogBlog ran a post by Graham Readfearn and one by me that detailed past deceptive behavior by Salby, his subsequent NSF debarment and other personal credibility issues. In 5 days, the 3 key blogs got 7 posts and 1,500 comments. but then the excitement ended as commenters suddenly lost interest. Of the 1,584 comments in the 3 blogs accumulated July 9-21, only 81 comments (5%) occurred from July 14 onward, most irrelevant to Salby. Blogs had spread a wave of unsupported accusations across a slice of the Internet.

The Australian persisted anyway, Wave 2, very small

On July 23, The Australian's Bernard Lane and an editor somehow had missed or ignored the July 12 exposure and two articles then appeared, including quote:

'Asked about the case, Dr Salby said he could not say much because it was “headed to court”.'

Given Salby's past record of deceptions, it is hard to know what that meant. Was that intention or a claim that he or MU had already filed suit? If Salby filed, when? Before mailing bloggers July 9? Before exposure July 12? Since then? He now can avoid answering any inconvenient questions, but one might wonder if a lawyer would have advised him to publish via blogs.

On July 28, Readfearn published Top Physicist Withdraws Support For Climate Sceptic Professor Sacked By Australian University. Wave 2 did not get far. Salby has often been to court, with little success. Many facts are yet to become public, and university administrations can perform badly, so reasoned caution is appropriate, although some accusations made little sense. In past cases he made serious, misleading accusations that rarely got far. Some of his accusations could be correct, if unlikely, but are irrelevant to this study, which simply illustrates a widespread willingness by many people to accept and amplify unsupported accusations in an outpouring of confirmation bias and conspiracy thinking that extended far beyond Macquarie.

In Wave 3, a month after July 12's DeSmogBlog posts, Salby gave a reply in NOVA.3, reblogged by DEPOT.8 andWUWT.4. After a few days, most comments diverted from Salby himself into long, old arguments claiming natural origin for CO2 rise in the last 150 years.

Chronology and overall flow among climate anti-science blogs

Dates and times can be tricky in tracking worldwide Internet events, but can be estimated using a time zone converter to get UTC. Web servers are assumed to be located in same time zones as blog owners unless other evidence is found. Although unclear when Salby sent the email, it was republished in NOVA.1 (July 09 afternoon) and WUWT.1 (late evening, Jul 08). About 3 hours later, in the UK morning, BISHOP.1 appeared. Many blog posts referenced others, so had to follow. Some posts' times were unknown, but had to precede first comments.

UTC
Adj

Local July
dd time

Estimated July
dd time UTC

Action

AU

+10

??

??

Salby email, ~Sydney

AU

+8

09 01:00pm-

09 05:00am-

NOVA.1, ~Perth

US

-7

08 10:40pm-

09 05:40am-

WUWT.1, ~California

GB

+1

09 08:50am-

09 07:50am-

BISHOP.1, ~UK

If nothing else, readers might scan the titles, often the only things people recall. Bloggers used strong language for events far away, with no evidence. Approximate chronology is shown for the key posts and a sample of others, first as a table, then graphically, excerpted from a detailed spreadsheet that shows the timing analysis. People often copied titles, but sometimes amplified stridency. The first occurrence of author is linked to a DeSmogBlog profile if available. Each title is linked to the file and when possible a WebCited version ~July 21. The large comment #s were at NOVA, WUWT and BISHOP. The list includes a few blogs that allow comments but rarely get any, just as added evidence that those bloggers had read and accepted others. Many more blogs may exist and commenters are typically outnumbered by others, “lurkers.” Blogroll links are shown on the 2nd sheet.

Red lines are clear references, blacks show cases where Australians or NOVA posters visited blogs elsewhere or referenced those blogs at NOVA.

Thus, unsupported accusations spread rapidly through key interconnected blogs read by many, in Wave 1. They spread later into isolated blogs that attracted little attention, but served to record belief in the original posts. The Australian published 3 articles, presumably reaching a larger audience, although Wave 2 failed in its objective of misleading a French physicist into support. In Wave 3, once again Salby worked through Nova, this time arguing with selected minutiae of the NSF case, still not offering any evidence regarding Macquarie.

Defamation by Internet? Part 2 - SalbyStorm Surges Through (Un)skeptical Blogs continues the analysis to examine the behavior patterns, starting with a sample of fascinating quotations.

Comments really can move public opinion. One method is called the Spiral of Silence - and it is very effective at controlling those who might speak out. It uses isolation and defamation. Quite cruel but effective. And a technique that lends itself to large organized, professional campaigns.

In AGW denial, the stated plan was to promote controversy - and so, in any article or press posting, even a few critical words can sabotage a message and taint the expert.

So organized trolling is very effective and PR campaigns deem it worth professional funding. I can confirm seeing this used by the Clean Coal campaign of a few years ago - when they foolishly put out a public call for paid trolls. Recruiting is certainly more secret now, but you demonstrate that it can be very organized and can be uncovered. Thanks.

I am a great admirer of your work. Not only is the specifics of the climate long emergency important, but the study of antiscientific disinformation is fascinating. Looking forward to the continuation of this series.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE